Soft power K2 Water
Warner et al. 13, Jeroen Warner, Mark Zeitoun, and Naho Mirumachi, nearest date given is 2013, all three authors are staff writers and environmental professors for the Australian National University, “How ‘soft’ power shapes transboundary water interaction,” http://press.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Global+Water%3A+Issues+and+Insights/11041/ch03.2.xhtml, NN
With monotonous regularity since the late 1980s nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), politicians or think tanks have predicted a water war. Recently, a UK minister predicted war in the coming decades (Harvey 2012). No such thing has happened, though, and prominent water scholars have argued a war fought strictly over water is unlikely in the future (Wolf 1996; Allan 2001). That does not mean there is peace and harmony among co-riparians. Power differences and latent conflicts persist, usually under the radar of the basin hegemon (or dominant power), but in full view of those who live their effects. The state of affairs in many transboundary basins can be characterised as a mix of cooperation and conflict (Mirumachi and Allan 2007), with those benefitting from the status quo emphasising the former. Our first article on the subject called this the ‘ugly’ side of cooperation (Zeitoun and Mirumachi 2008). A clue to understanding this situation, we argue in its sequel (Zeitoun et al. 2011), is to look at what lies beneath: how power is exercised. The ‘water wars’ discourse has simplistically focused on the exercise of hard power, predominantly violence and coercion. Both philosophical reasoning (Hannah Arendt) and empirically grounded hydropolitical work (Dinar 2009) has shown, however, that rule based on fear and brute power has little hope in the long term. Some kind of legitimacy and consent is needed to perpetuate any skewed transboundary water arrangement based on unequal power relations. Empirically, we find relations between riparians to be governed by a wider spectrum of power instruments, from side payments and bribery to persuasion and inciting desire to emulating success. This wide range of nonviolent, co-optative power manifestations is collectively known as ‘soft’ power: getting others to want what you want. Nye (1990) sought to explain how relations can be peaceful through the power of attraction without the need for a threat of violence. We find, however, that soft power not only contains the positive power of attraction, but also its negative, repellence away from certain agendas and issues, and towards maintenance of a biased status quo. Nye was reiterating Machiavelli’s understanding of power as a centaur, half man (arguably rational), half horse (based on strength). He was far more optimistic than Machiavelli about human progress towards eternal peace, buttressed by freedom and trade. Fragmented evidence to support this hope exists in transboundary water contexts; many treaties never really came off the ground, and even in highly integrated Europe, diplomatic crises over water are not unheard of (Warner and van Buuren 2009). A soft power perspective may not yet be sophisticated enough to explain power relations between riparians. Our analytical framework of ‘hydro-hegemony’ (Zeitoun and Warner 2006) highlights how conflict, even if it is not open and visible, can be structurally present between riparians (and groundwater users from transboundary aquifers). In an integrated transboundary water configuration, interests between dominant and subordinate are harmonious; in a distributed power configuration, they are fundamentally at odds. Cooperation by the non-hegemonic actor, or its compliance with certain states of affairs, does not necessarily mean consensus. Successful framing by the stronger party of the common good (soft power), however, can result in power differences going uncontested and countries signing treaties that bring highly differential benefits. Unqualified calls for and claims to transboundary cooperation ‘of any sort, no matter how slight’ (UNDP 2006) are therefore as wrongheaded as are alarms over water wars. Policy and programs promoting unqualified ‘cooperation’ were criticised on the grounds that negative forms of cooperation need reform or resolution, not management or encouragement.
Water insecurity lead to global instability, warming, and war
Harvey 12, Fiona Harvey, 3/22/12, Harvey is an environmental correspondent for The Guardian, “Water wars between countries could be just around the corner, Davey warns,” http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/22/water-wars-countries-davey-warns, NN
Water wars could be a real prospect in coming years as states struggle with the effects of climate change, growing demand for water and declining resources, the secretary of state for energy and climate change warned on Thursday. Ed Davey told a conference of high-ranking politicians and diplomats from around the world that although water had not been a direct cause of wars in the past, growing pressure on the resource if climate change is allowed to take hold, together with the pressure on food and other resources, could lead to new sources of conflict and the worsening of existing conflicts. "Countries have not tended to go to war over water, but I have a fear for the world that climate instability drives political instability," he said. "The pressure of that makes conflict more likely." Even a small temperature rise – far less than the 4C that scientists predict will result from a continuation of business as usual – could lead to lower agricultural yields, he warned, at a time when population growth means that demand for food was likely to be up by 70% by 2060. By the same time, he noted, the number of people living in conditions of serious water stress would have reached 1.8 billion, according to estimates. "Climate change intensifies pressures on states, and between states," he told the conference, gathered to discuss whether climate change and natural resources should be regarded as a national security issue. "[Its effects] can lead to internal unrest … and exacerbate existing tensions. We have to plan for a world where climate change makes difficult problems even worse." But Davey recalled previous global catastrophes that had been averted, including the threat of nuclear armageddon during the cold war, and successes such as the elimination of smallpox. He urged governments to work on adapting to climate change as a matter of urgency, as well as striving for an international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. His call was echoed by Ali Bongo Ondimba, president of the Gabonese Republic. He told the conference that Africa was the most vulnerable part of the world to climate change, but that African people had been responding to a changing climate for thousands of years – his own Bantu people had been forced, centuries ago, to move around Africa as areas dried out and food became scarcer. Gabon had already started to take action to protect the 88% of its land that is covered by rainforest, and to reduce carbon emissions by its industries, with a view to a "transformation" by 2025. He warned that seeking to lift people out of poverty could not be achieved at the expense of degrading natural resources. He warned that policies for economic growth across the continent must reflect this immediately: "The impact [of degradation] cannot be reversed by policies conceived too late."
Insecure access to water causes nuclear war
Weiner, 1990 (Jonathan Weiner, 1990, Visiting Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. The Next One Hundred Years: Shaping the Fate of Our Living Earth, p. 214)
If we do not destroy ourselves with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, then we may destroy ourselves with the C-bomb, the Change Bomb. And in a world as interlinked as ours, one explosion may lead to the other. Already in the Middle East, from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and from the Nile to the Euphrates, tensions over dwindling water supplies and rising populations are reaching what many experts describe as a flashpoint. A climate shift in the single battle-scarred nexus might trigger international tensions that will unleash some of the 60,000 nuclear warheads the world has stockpiled since Trinity.
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